loS IGNORABIMUS ET REST1UNGAMUR. 



Bois-Eeymond is still far from understanding the full 

 significance of transmutation as affording a mecha- 

 nical explanation of morphological problems. In this 

 paper the " History of Creation " is treated simply as 

 a romance, and the genealogies of phylogenesis are in 

 his eyes " of about as much value as the pedigrees of 

 the Homeric heroes are in the eyes of historical critics." 

 Geologists may be extremely grateful for this estimate 

 of their science, for undoubtedly geology, as a structure 

 of hypotheses, is neither more nor less justifiable than 

 phylogenesis, as I have already pointed out in my 

 Munich address : " Our phylogenetic hypotheses may 

 claim to have equal value with the universally-admitted 

 hypotheses of geology ; the only difference is this, that 

 the mighty structure of hypotheses called geology is 

 incomparably more complete, simpler, and easier to 

 grasp than that more youthful one called phylogenesis." 

 But as to the much-talked-of " genealogies," though 

 they are nothing more than the simplest, barest, and 

 most superficial expression of the hypotheses of 

 phylogenesis, as provisional hypotheses they are just 

 as indispensable to specific phylogenesis as the theo- 

 retical section-tables of the strata of the earth's crust 

 are to geology. 



If Du Bois-Eeymond is so convinced of the truth 

 of transmutation as he has lately given himself out 

 to be, why does not he make at least one earnest 



